Tag Archives: Whistleblower

Where a defendant employer was awarded summary judgment on a retaliation claim asserted by a terminated employee under the False Claims Act, the judgment must be vacated because the factual record reveals a sufficient foundation for a reasonable inference that the employee was terminated for retaliatory reasons.

Where a U.S. District Court judge concluded that the whistleblower protection provision in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies to employees of private companies that are contractors or subcontractors to publicly traded companies, that conclusion is contrary to the statutory text and accordingly must be reversed.

Where a pro se plaintiff has brought a claim against the defendant employer under the Massachusetts Whistleblower Protection Act, that claim must be dismissed because the defendant is neither an agency nor a political subdivision of the commonwealth and thus the defendant does not qualify as an employer under the Act.

Where a plaintiff employee has charged the defendant with violating the False Claims Act, the FCA claims must be dismissed because (1) the plaintiff has failed to allege fraud on the government with sufficient particularity and (2) the plaintiff has failed to plead a plausible causal connection between the defendant’s decision to terminate her employment and its knowledge or perception that she was engaged in protected FCA-related activity.

Where a plaintiff has alleged that the defendant terminated his at-will employment in violation of Massachusetts public policy, the defendant’s motion for summary judgment must be allowed because (1) the plaintiff failed to present any evidence that his termination was causally related to his complaints about his supervisor’s criminal conduct and (2) the employer had a legitimate reason to discharge him.

Where a plaintiff brought suit claiming that she was wrongfully discharged from employment for communicating to superiors certain “bad practices,” the plaintiff’s action did not come within the scope of the public policy exception to the employment-at-will doctrine.

Where a plaintiff, alleging that he was denied reappointment to the defendant hospital’s medical staff as a consequence of his whistleblowing activities, brought a multi-count complaint against the hospital and a codefendant who was a prominent member of the peer review process characterized by the plaintiff as a ‘sham,’ the antitrust count of the complaint should be dismissed, but the defendants’ dismissal motion should otherwise be denied.